


three moments suspended in time

by anstaar



Series: when the door opens [5]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 22:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstaar/pseuds/anstaar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aral and his first wife: before, during, and after the disaster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three moments suspended in time

**before.**  
  
"It's been a long time," Nina says. She's beautiful (she's always beautiful) and he can feel a bubble of joy and longing and _rightness_. He told Ges, once (drunk and halfway toward unconsciousness, with one arm wrapped tightly around his friend's shoulders), that Nina is the living force of Vor womanhood (Ges had laughed and rested his cheek against Aral's and murmured, 'then she'll go perfectly with you, my living honor,' and Aral didn't remember any of it in the morning). It's not exactly her appearance. She's tall (as tall as him, actually) and striking, but her hair is short enough to make the elderly Vor click their tongues at the follies of youth and her build is more along the lines of formidable than slender. She has killed a man (a soldier), though. Eleven years old when Ezar's army took the capital, she was there, a prisoner in her father's house. She stabbed her guard through the stomach with her Vorfemme knife when he tried to use her as a hostage against her family. Aral has read the report and he remembers seeing her, standing by Ges, the day they watched as Ezar took their fathers' oaths and end a war.  
  
"Too long, my lady," he says, with a kiss on her hand that is only faintly ironic. This will work.  
  
 **during.**  
  
Dinner is silent that night. He canceled the party that she had set up and ignored the reproachful stare of the armsman he had set outside to make sure no one could get in. The meal is soup but Nina eats like she's slicing a piece of meat into tiny pieces. Before, he might have joked (or tried to joke) that the soup was _supposed_ to be hot and probably didn't need half an hour of being waved in the air. Before, her righteous anger at his lateness and his temerity in interfering with her carefully balanced schedule would have been well deserved and he would've apologized. Before, she might've relented with a mock-stern demand for stories about his duties and a kiss of forgiveness that he would've returned with passion. Now, all he can think about when he looks at her is Ges' hands and, 'if it's just then that's just sad,' and the grooves his fingernails have dug in the palms of his hands. She's angry but he can feel the icy rage ( _dishonor_ ) burning through his veins and they both know who would win. That evening, he leaves her locked in the house; one hand is wrapped so tightly around the hilt of his sword that the imprint lasts through her funeral.         
  
 **after.**  
  
On the last day of leave before he's to report to Kyril Island he visits Nina's grave. The last time he was there was at the funeral. He spent the day drunk enough that he's surprised his breath didn't catch on fire as he burned his death offering. It's been a long while but the grave is as neat as it was then (there's a man, he learns later, a forty years man, who deals with unruly grass, overzealous burnings and gravestone repairs), neater, actually, because the earth has settled and the grass grown. She could have laid there forever. He lays his hand gently on the stone and feels empty.


End file.
